1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to text-to-speech (“TTS”), and, more particularly, to generating paralinguistic events in synthetic speech.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many businesses utilize automated telephone systems as a means for efficiently interacting with callers. A business creates a series of prewritten text responses to potential questions/answers by callers. When a caller speaks to a voice recognition system, a computer responds by reading the corresponding prewritten text. The computer's response is audibly and automatically produced for the caller using text-to-speech software.
Text-to-speech (“TTS”) is the generation of synthesized speech from text. Primary TTS goals include making synthesized speech as intelligible, natural and pleasant to listen to as human speech, and to have it communicate just as meaningfully.